AN 



ORATION 



COMMEMORATIVE OF THE 



CHARACTER OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, 



HENRY H. TATOR, ESQ. 



Nunquam nimis dicitur quod nuriquaui satis dicitur. 



COPY RIGHT SKCritED. 



ALBA N V : 
JOEL MUNSELL, 58 STATE STREET. 

1852. 



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Qass_JLMJ 
Book XAA 



I 



AN 



ORATION 

COMMEMORATIVE OF THE 

* I 

CHARACTER OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, 



HENRY H. TATOR, ESQ. 



Nunquam nimis dicitur quod nunquam satis dicitur. 



COPY RIGHT SECURED. 






ALBANY: 

JOEL MUNSELL, 58 STATE STREET. 

1852. 



E33Z 






DEDICATORY EPISTLE. 



au 



Says Euripides, " the very autumn of a form 
once fine, retains its outline beauties ;" thus 
the millionth century of a fame once complete, 
finds it still in the youth of beauty, if not in 
the beauty of youth. The gross private man- 
ners of too many public men cause the latter 
attainment of them, to appear like a defaced 
sphinx. Give liberty a friend not gangrened 
by grossness, and she will encase it in her 
soul's soul, as does the skull its though tfilled 
brain. Put on the erminical garb of public 
honors, trimmed with private virtues, and for- 
tune will assuredly give you both her heart 
and hand. A ruler may not do unto his nation 
as did Alcibiades to the father of Callias, first 
commit a wanton injury to another, and then 
restitute at pleasure; rather let him seek with 
his best judgment to do it justice as a servant, 
and to serve it as he would an aged and gen- 
erous parent, with a most prudent solicitude for 
its prosperity, security and peace. The reader, 
like the author, should be wiser at the closing 
than at the opening of a book ; thus a ruler, 
like the people ruled, should be happier at the 
end than at the beginning of an administration. 
This twig of my gratefulness towards Thomas 
Jefferson, I dedicate to my friend, whose ex- 
tensive learning, and sound judgment, are 
adorned by a commanding genius, 

EDWARD I. SEARS. 



ORATION, 



Friends of universal freedom : 

A commander of a nation's armed forces, 
who defends his country from fell invaders, 
deserves a high and honorable distinction from 
every class of his countrymen. A Monarch 
who governs his subjects with the skill of kind- 
ness and keen sense, ever reining them strait- 
way towards the ability of self ruling, bears his 
monarchship becomingly. A President who 
discharges his executory duties energetically, 
and for the fixed good of all who bestow on 
him the governing favor, will rejoice with his 
benignant cotemporaries, and posterity will 
bless his remembrance. Yet an author whose, 
inspired spirit and independence of thought, 
despising personal or national oppression, draws 
up a plan to throw it off defiancingly, is a man 
who honors G od ; nay, he is the commander 
of military commanders, the master of heredi- 
tary monarchs, and presides over elect presi- 
dents, as is proper for such superiority of man- 
hood. Such an author was Thomas Jefferson. 
Mr. Jefferson's youthful days were lived up in 
an ardent culture of his mind, in the acquisition 
of every species of valuable learning, in positive 
studentship over the works of the most marked 
literary writers of past ages. The arts and 
sciences likewise aided in filling out the stature 
of his great intellectuality. He avoided, with 
a powerful moral rigor of purpose, those little 



sins which society loves too generally to gratify 
its sense and unnatural appetites with, and 
which the young too frequently feel elated 
somewhat in imitating. He seems to have 
early comprehended the idea that life's value 
and attractiveness, like the farmer's renowned 
mint, lie quite beneath the surface, and that 
labor, life-long delving and labor, would alone 
bring them to his possession ; and that an 
idle, useless, aimless mode of living, is alto- 
gether and entirely wrong, and leaves but 
darkness and death behind. He lived in youth 
so that in age also he might have a youthful 
life of blessed remembrance to live over and 
over, again and again, till life's last sand had 
fallen. It is in having a little of the richest 
soil that a fine yield is obtained without ex- 
cessive tilling ; likewise, it is by reading a few 
of the best works that the young become com- 
pletely learned, of just habits, and obtain cor- 
rect views of life with comparatively little toil- 
some study. There will always be a few books 
that must be to man as so many fixed guides 
to the respective subjects on which they dis- 
course ; as there will ever be a few heavenly 
bodies for fixed and shining references, that 
astronomers of all times may find their way 
without bewilderment while surveying and 
studying the deep blue eye of overhanging 
Creation. The horticulturist delights in the 
thought that the sprigs he is to day setting out 
and cultivating, will a few years hence be 
thrifty and fruitful ; yet if they are then other- 
wise, and are from no neglect of his, unthrifty 
and unfruitful, the sight of them affords him 
little pleasure, while the reflection of lost and 
unrequited care and attention brings him 
pain ; thus, if the child whom kind parents are 



6 

this hour rearing with deep set hopes that it 
will be a blessing to them and an ornament to 
the world at some coming period, yet when 
that period comes, and brings not with it the 
long anticipated glory, then, then happiness 
and hope lock arms in reality, and with droop- 
ing heads and womlly downcast, seem for once 
to desert their heart-home forever. 

A young man who ever keeps before him, -J 

plain as the path he treads in, the thought that \ 

a parent's joy or sorrow, if not even life or death, 
depend on his conduct, as the pivot on which 
it turns either way with them, can not but do % 

well. The violet may wilt down with heat, 
and the tulip be cut down with frost ; yet sum- 
mer shall not burn, nor shall winter freeze a 
grateful and dutiful child. Mr. Jefferson's ex- 
ercise of his mental powers was, while yet in 
the morning of his life, seen, felt and acknow- 
ledged at the very tribunal of civil affairs, and 
thence throughout all the colonies of America. 
/Patriotism, not partyism, independence to men, 
/ not a mean dependence under men, national 
| rights to all nations, not the rights of one na- 
tion to the exclusion of all others, personal 
freedom to every man, not any man to be bound 
in person, these and other views of humanity's 
interrelationship to humanity resembling these, 
were the children of his heart, and which that 
heart left as its richest treasures to community. 
The death of the silkworm does not destroy the 
valuable evidence of its having existed, nor the 
good derivable from that evidence ; neither does 
the death of a great man take with it the sub- 
stance and usefulness of his former life, nor 
does his remembrance perish at the grave. An 
unquenchable desire for good works, great in 
amount, so move some hearts, that from the 



rising to the setting of life, they labor and still 
labor on, to honor and bless their human bre- 
thren. A large and capacious mind, whose 
undoubted greatness of works is everywhere 
acknowledged, is not to be crushed down and 
die away, by every, or even any chilly tempo- 
rary change in the opinions of men ; it is not a 
mere sapling liable to be torn up from its foun- 
dation by some sudden and unexpected breeze 
that chances to pass it ; it is rather a mighty 
banian, whose trunk rises till it cuts the clouds, 
and outspreading in a thousand descending 
branches, which reaching the earth, imbed 
themselves deeply in its bosom, until finally by 
the magnitude of its outstretched arms, a sha- 
dy repose is formed, beneath which great bo- 
dies of mankind may be refreshed, till at length 
the civilized races one and all shall have felt 
and owned that they were rendered happier by 
its existence, while aroused to deep and uni- 
versal gratitude, they kneel in devout homage 
and awe. Death removed Moses from the 
earth, yet the commandments of God's moral 
law revealed to him, and from him to men, 
still exist in all the essential attributes of their 
original beauty and truthfulness. Death re- 
moved Cicero from the earth, yet his orations, 
which were the soul's immortal offsprings, still 
flourish among men. Death removed Locke 
from the earth, yet the practical theory of the 
cultivation of the understanding taught by him, 
even now almost encompasses the nations by 
its popularity. Death removed Gall and Spurze- 
heim from the earth, yet their discoveries in 
the science of mind arrest, and will continue 
to arrest an intelligent attention, until their 
united glories and utilities shall be universally 
admitted to surpass all the other discoveries 



8 

known to the world. L-Mr. Jefferson's first no- 
ticeable act, which was performed in the fore- 
noon of his life, was the most important and 
inestimable of any of his great acts ; he drew 
up the Declaration of American Independence 
to effect a good object, yet the good it has ef- 
fected, is effecting, and will continue to effect 
eternally on the condition of mankind, as 
divided or joined in free civil governmental or 
municipal communities, neither his very clever 
comprehensiveness of mind, nor that of the 
cleverest of his compeers, nor of his or their 
successors down to the passing generation, can 
at most, more than dimly conceive. His at- 
tachment to truth in every form, led him to be 
truthfully correct in all his statements as liber- 
ty's draftist. He knew that the entire truth, 
undividedly and without reserve, farther than 
prudence suggested, would in the final result 
be the best both for the oppressor Britain and 
the oppressed America. Therefore he uttered 
the whole truth in the premises, and the result 
is as he, no doubt, forethought and forefelt it 
would be. Great is that joy which rests on him 
that conceives a plan to disinthrall his fettered 
countrymen, it exceeds the joy that dies with 
the occasion which gave it origin. No earthly 
power can be so strong that Omnipotence can- 
not sway it ; thus no error can be so deep and 
dark, but that truth can reach it, and make it 
flee from the light thereof. In the deathless- 
ness of truth, lies the reward of finding and giv- 
ing it to men ; for an unending good entirely 
overpays us for the most tiresome toil we can 
undergo in the accomplishing of it, merely in 
that pleasant memory we may enjoy from it, 
under all circumstances. As there are, doubt- 
less, planetary bodies now existing at unknown 




distances, whose light will not strike the earth 
for millions of years to come ; thus, no doubt, 
there are truthful ideas now among us, and will 
remain among men from century to century, 
until years numbering millions too, shall for the 
first time, find them filling the brain and form- 
ing the being of posterity. 

From creation's depth to creation's dome, 
Truth crowds the space immense and roams, 
Like God's swift sight, that swiftest thought — outflies 
All over earth, and through cerulean skies. 
Seared in sin, till single murders sinless seem, 
Scared in crime, till every act looks like a fiend, 
Gulfed in misdeeds, deeper than time can reach, 
'Scapes not truth; for truth is there to teach, 
That its clear ken, shoots through dayless night, 
Smites the sightless soul and gives it light. 
The creaking snow crust, 'ueath the wild doe's feet, 
Bends, yet breaks not, while a form so fleet 
Skips o'er it's surface; e'en thus truthful souls 
Touch this earthlife fearless, as they stroll 
On threatning surfaces, still wooing life beyond 
With speed becoming. 

Mr. Jefferson's greatness of character can not 
be enlarged and beautified, yet it may be ren- 
dered more visible to the general eye of man- 
kind by judicious encomium ; as the milky- 
way can not have one spark added to its amaz- 
ing lustre, though the power of telescopic 
agency may render its real appearance more 
discernible to the gaze of men. His most in- 
fluential acts are as familiar to the country as 
are victory and liberty. His pen moved, and the 
mask fell from the confused face of his coun- 
try's enemy ; it moved again, and religious free- 
dom of thought, renting her shroud, arose to 
smile on Virginia; another stroke, and the 
spirit of American diplomacy, lifted still high- 
er its noble form. His bright memory will as 
safely pass on to the yet brighter rewards laid 
2 



10 

up for it in the heart of posterity, as though it 
were another sun beaming from the depth of 
Heaven. 

Excellent Jefferson ! distinguished author of 
the Declaration of American Independence ! 
elegant literaturist of the eighteenth century 1 
sound and learned statesman ! Whoever lives 
after the great declarer for modern liberties, 
will strive, if an Americanist in principle, to be 
worthy of so seerly an ancestor. Whoever ris- 
es up in the morning, with a mornlike fresh- 
ness of piety in thought, will praise the name 
of Jefferson, and through it the name of Jeho- 
vah. Whoever lies down in the evening with 
an evelike placidity of conscience, will resolve 
to perform on the coming morrow all the frui- 
tional duties of a freeman. Whoever beholds 
the fourth day of the second summer month 
of every succeeding year, with a true eye, will 
live thro' that day as a day of love, and love 
its return as the return of liberty. Whoever in 
far off centuries, shall delight to peruse the 
penly triumphs of the past, will find the peru- 
sal of few Patriotic efforts more interesting, de- 
lighting and instructing, than the American 
Declaration. Whoever can comprehend the 
full benefits lavished on the 'world, by the 
timely introduction of that Declaration, has a 
sweep and power of soul that can draw the 
sword of Orion, and add to him another belt of 
starry beauty. Whoever would be a subscrip- 
tionist indeed, let him subscribe to the continu- 
ance of his country's independence. Whoever 
would be a contributionist indeed, let him con- 
tribute some commemorating emblem to the 
free government he enjoys, and to the founders 
and preservers of his enjoyments. Whoever 
truly becomes an existence, so august as that 



11 

which Heaven bestows on humanity, will stamp 
beneath him the unbecoming hope, that seeks 
even the sight of an Oligarchy. Whoever du- 
ly estimates the good works of his fathers, will 
esteem himself too highly to ever disgrace the 
name, or even degenerate from the glory he so 
honorably inherits. Whoever would have the 
dews of the sky settle on, and refresh the 
flowers that bloom over the dust of his fathers, 
so long as the earth rolls from West to East, let 
him say nothing but what his immortal sires 
would themselves gladly have said, and do no- 
thing but what he would fain have a beloved 
posterity do. Whoever among the uncounted 
millions of our descendants, shall yet read and 
re-read the Declaration, which gave an inter- 
minable impetus to governmental liberty in 
America, the administering of which is improv- 
ed and still improvable, may he declare to 
man, and re-declare to God, that he will faith- 
fully espouse the principles it espouses, defend 
the cause it defends, and advance the republic 
it advances, while he exists among men. May 
it descend to posterity, like the holy mantle un- 
to Elisha — may posterity receive it as the so- 
lemn counsel of a spirit, that once ruled a na- 
tion in the majesty of love, from the lovely 
summit of Monticello ; nor approach the 
tomb of its author, without the authority 
of practically valuing the truth he proclaim- 
ed. His fame will live, till every continent on 
the Globe is overspread with a republic ; till 
every republic greets its sisters with a smile of 
glory, and until the republican glories of each 
mingle with, and illumine them all. Mr. Jef- 
ferson's unionality of design, during the time 
he administered the Executive Department of 
the American Government, towards each State 



12 

alike, endeared him profoundly and permanent- 
ly to the entire republic. Division of purpose, 
reaching and affecting the general government, 
he could not conscientiously tolerate, much 
less countenance. Union in the morning, uni- 
on at noon-day, union at evening, and an eter- 
nal union of the American States, was liis one- 
abiding thought, object, hope and aspiration. 
He could not bear the idea, that posterity should 
ever murmur to itself, " there was an America ; 
there were States in that America ; there was 
union among those States ; there was power in 
that union ; there was independence in that 
power, and there was happiness and prosperity 
in that independence ; but now alas ! this hap- 
py chain of blessings has been broken and has 
passed away ; because discord led to their dis- 
union, disunity made them weak, and weak- 
ness brought the downfall of their liberties, 
leaving but a submerged wreck as a legacy to 
us, their successors." 

Heaven may not send a plague, nor the af- 
flictions of Job on a man who causes or aids in 
causing the disunion of the American States ; 
yet such a man can not reasonably expect the 
unwonted glories of Solomon, nor the placid 
life and death of King Numa to follow him 
wooingly. Liberty may exist, yet cannot be en- 
joyed between men without unity of interests. 
Death separates body and spirit ; thus a disuni- 
on of the States would undoubtedly separate 
liberty from America. Liberty and America 
are as double stars, shining in harmony over 
and throughout the despotic nations of the 
earth. Preserve state union, and freedom will 
not tremble, from the undue weakness of her 
American votaries ; yet it is not wise to fear at 
all, unless the well-based fabric of reality, en- 



13 

dangering our entirely free representative form 
of government, comes up to our eyesight bold- 
ly ; for men must have as well as nations, an 
unfaltering and established faith in their own 
self-preserving power. There is an individuali- 
ty, likewise an unionality, in all the works of 
nature ; so the works of men, tho' all disting- 
uishable from each other, ought still to have a 
unitability throughout. An American State 
that disunites from the universal sisterhood of 
States, without just cause, will cause its own 
disgrace and ruin, sooner or later. A State, 
like a man, can not be happiest in solitude and 
seclusion ; for as men need the intercourse and 
aid of each other, to develop all their faculties 
naturally, and to live prosperously ; so States 
mast have, yield to, and enjoy from each other 
that peculiar aid, which nature has so plentifully 
provided each with, for the plain enough pur- 
pose of drawing and uniting them together, 
and rendering them friendly towards, and to 
feel dependent somewhat one to another. 

Mr. Jefferson favored whatever policy of go- 
vernment comported most with a consistent 
and honorable peace, with his own and foreign 
nations. He never approved nor gave hearing, 
to unnecessary involvings of national strife and 
warfare. Away above petty dissensions and 
contention, local or universal, which point to, 
lead on, and finally drag a nation down the 
whirlpool of debt, disgrace, and widespread ca- 
lamity and death, arose his ennobled mind in 
sagelike counsel; "that one year of peace is 
worth a lifetime of national strife and bellige- 
rancy ; and that that nation is strangely un- 
wise, which, in any case incurs a war, when 
even at a considerable self-sacrifice it can be 
averted." As a ruler, he was too wise to ap- 



14 

prove the engaging in a war because other na- 
tions were then, or had been in their time en- 
gaged therein. He sought peace for the good of 
his country, and his country's good required it. 
If Jupiter chained Prometheus to the rocks of 
Caucassus, there came a Hercules to release 
him ; but if America ventures her liberty on 
the wave of chance, by engaging in an unjust 
and dishonorable warfare, she may find a Jupi- 
ter to bind her, yet no Hercules to break the 
chains that gall her to the bone. A spirit of 
sterling common sense pervaded his every ac- 
tion, which induced men to rely with decid- 
ed confidence on what he planned and propos- 
ed, whether as presiding magistrate of the re- 
public, or as its honored and cherished private 
citizen ; nay, like Otho, he was universally be- 
loved by his countrymen, whether he ruled 
them by the laws of the land, or only by the 
law of his heart's love. Nature itself seeks a 
continual peace, rather than disturbance at all, 
nor does it allow the least warfare among its 
elements, except that a more permanent peace- 
fulness is to arise therefrom. Invasions unjust, 
followed by just repulsions, create both indivi- 
dual and national warfare, which not being 
avoided by the invaders, may be commended 
on the part of the repulsors ; for both individu- 
al and national rights assuredly exist, as do in- 
dividuals and nations themselves, and are to be 
respected and defended though blood is spilt, 
or even the spirit is stricken from the body in 
such defence ; for what is life, unless what is 
its own, is its own to protect it, and be pro- 
tected by it, in its proper use thereof? At the 
instance of universal peace on earth, will the 
divine palm rest on man with its manifold 
blessings. 



15 

Peace! Thou thornless rose thy perfume sweetens life! 
War! Thou roseless thorn thy all is deathly strife! 
Peace uplifts the world, leads it on to God, [rod. 

Sheathes the murderer's sword, and breaks the warrior's 
Contention binds the soul, prepares the boiling lead, 
Pours it down its vitals, with awful pain the bed. 
Altheas bloom, to gild the moody fall 
Succeeding gay-famed summer, while dying roses call 
Aloud for sweet successors; thus holy peace 
Descends on man, bidding all troubles cease, 
Marring his earthly moments, while beckoning Heaven 
Chants his advent thither. 

Mr. Jefferson sought diligently for that equal- 
ity of rights and privileges to those governed, 
which nature has so amply and consummately 
provided for ; it was no part of his natures' in- 
dependent moral thought, and equally indepen- 
dent moral action, — to at all proscribe the na- 
turally inherited rights of any man, but rather 
to promote them. Like Lycurgus in his plen- 
titude of governmental wisdom, he granted 
more right and privilege to those whom he go- 
verned, than they, in their less largely develop- 
ed minds, could conceive existed for them. 
The quality of common sense was an eminent 
possession of his, and to it we refer, as a bold 
index to his almost inimitable general charac- 
ter. It rendered his labors acceptable in his time, 
and to his age, and their good influence was 
enjoyed by mankind without delay. He was 
less a theorist than a practicalist, and yet he 
had theory enough, to give permanence to his 
views of practical dealings between neighbor 
and neighbor, between state and state, and be- 
tween nation and nation, so as to meet the ra- 
tional demands of each and every one. Rome's 
injustice to herself laid her low, more, perhaps, 
than any other known cause ; so America's in- 
justice to herself will bring her to the earth and 
beneath it, but too quickly. Rulers must be 



16 

just to nations and nations to rulers, or neither 
will prosper. Rulers however begin the work 
of unjust acts in nearly every case ; and the 
people finish it up by retorting in following 
their erroneous example, and thus the good of 
each is lost in the evil of the other. A ruler of 
high moral independence of mind, and an ho- 
nor to his office not merely officially honorable, 
is indeed a centre mast, around which a nation 
can gather, against which it can lean, and to 
which it can cling in the confidence of en- 
tire safety, when dark troubles and tempest- 
like dangers approach. Nations should choose 
rulers that will add strength and beauty to 
their national statures, not those who cannot 
be seen, unless held up high, on the hands of 
others. As God in the construction and forma- 
tion of natural objects, which surround and are 
used in divers ways by man for his enjoyment, 
has provided them more sufficiently, than man 
himself in any wise could think to request of 
him ; so a ruler of a people should study out 
and suggest to them the means to promote 
their well doing and well living, more abun- 
dantly than they, in the fulness of their requi- 
sitions can wish him to. It is the part of sound 
practical sense, to provide amply the means, of 
comfort and support for ourselves and our fel- 
low brethren in this present life. More men 
have too little than too much common sense. 
Common sense pursues the direct course of du- 
ty and facts, and its opponents soon acknow- 
ledge the propriety of its cause ; masters the 
rudiments of its enterprises, before it ventures 
on the more complex and varied departments 
of the treatise of life ; develops the muscles of 
its intellectual arms, before it attempts to square 
off with the strongest thinker ; improves its 



17 

conversational skill privately, before it affects 
to vie with the skillful archer of speech public- 
ly ; is willing to be an humble pupil of its al- 
phabet in youth, before it becomes the honor- 
able tutor of republics in age; it gives a charm- 
ing grace to nature, and becomes even the no- 
bie nature of man. Mr. Jefferson's personal 
example as regards private and public enter- 
prise, may well be held high before the na- 
tion's eye, and before the eye of every nation. 
He would be continually improving something. 
His aim was the aim of advancement; his 
means were the means of enterprise ; and his 
life was a life of improvement. To himself, he 
took but little, while to his country he gave ev- 
ery thing in his power to give. He lived be- 
cause he could not but do the will of nature, 
yet he lived for the good of his people, because 
duty enjoined it. He must have a home to 
protect himself from the elements, yet he would 
have his countrymen one and all supplied with 
homes because they were his fellow freemen, 
as well as because nature required it. He de- 
lighted to improve and embellish his own resi- 
dence and possessions, yet the general improve- 
ment and embellishment of the habitations and 
possessions, whether isolated or composing vil- 
lages and towns and cities, of every size and 
importance throughout his native realm, and 
throughout the realm of every nation known 
to man; delighted him proportionally still more. 
A country's physical improvement generally 
beats time to, and keeps step with, the intellec- 
tual, moral and social elevation and perfection 
of those who inhabit it. Higher attainments 
in the arts, more enlarged research in the 
sciences, adornments in the form of private 
dwellings, and public structures of every style 
3 



18 

and magnificence, together with choice fruits 
of scarce numerable varieties, and grains of 
most nutritive growth for table preparations, 
with raiment of beauty and richness for bodily- 
comfort and ornament, also facilities for con- 
veying man, or his thoughts alone, to a greater 
or lesser distance over the earth, by the apply- 
ing of steam, and its more sprightly co-worker, 
electricity ; these and thousands of like advan- 
tages and signs of civilization, are the progeny 
of private and public, or individual and national 
necessity, capacity, ingenuity and enterprise. 
Grecian bulk and grandeur, or Roman beauty 
and utility of architecture, and of many valu- 
able species of art, are, it is truly said, so many 
books of history, and tongues of silent, solemn, 
sacred eloquence to the nations that succeed 
them. It is well to be thus. Thus may it be 
with America, with this exception, that if Ame- 
ricans are true to themselves, posterity will ne- 
ver read their history in ruins unrebuilt, but 
will read it rather as we read nature's works, 
by a gradually passing away of old, though 
useful things, and a gradual, yet certain sub- 
stitution of new things, still more useful, beau- 
tiful, glorious and complete. Neither men nor 
nations need fear that the great and good works 
they achieve, will be entirely lost and forgotten 
by their successors. Herchel's six moons can 
not be taken from him, nor Saturn's double 
wreath stripped from his planetary brow by an 
undivine hand ; neither can the heart's up- 
springing hopes for a life beyond death be shut 
off, nor the effects of kind deeds performed by 
a man's two hands be destroyed by enemies on 
the earth. 

Mr. Jefferson earnestly and steadfastly desi- 
red as his life, history and character furnish, 



19 

ample and entire proof, that the American na- 
tion should wisely, virtuously and steadily, and 
thereby ultimately attain to a commanding po- 
sition, such as allowed no rivalship between it 
and the other powers of earth. He wished it 
to be no meteor to blaze forth in fearful splen- 
dor for a brief season, and then pass away to 
the darkness of oblivion, or lost to the future 
in the ruinous abyss of the past ; but rather a 
Sirius, whose intrinsic light and glory absorbs, 
as it were, that of ordinary suns and orbs 
that shine, till at length its own brightness ex- 
ceeds that of all other luminaries, and its own 
glories surpass those of all other bodies through- 
out the realms of creation. He counseled the 
nation to provide itself with every needful re- 
source of self-defence, in case of foreign ag- 
gression, and also to supply itself with provis- 
ional resorts in abundance, with which to fight 
and resist universal famine ; as the snow-fro- 
zen Alps of Switzerland are heaped up and re- 
served by nature to supply Southern Europe 
with waters in abundance, when a lengthened 
drouth dries up the rivulets, streams and rivers 
of the valley. Let it be remembered that a 
country's true glory, like the air we breathe, 
though it can not be seen by the eye of man, 
may yet exist in its most useful, reliable and 
attractive form ; for palaces of pearl, temples 
of rubies, and emeraldic memorials of human 
power and skill, may appear to us in astonish- 
ing numbers every where in a land, yet that 
land may be more inglorious before God, than 
when earth only is the floor, the horizon the 
walls, and the overarching firmament the only 
roof to shelter the body or attract the * eye ; 
while a pure and honest purpose of heart, how- 
ever invisible in outward show and pretension, 



20 

goes farther to glorify a nation than even the 
wise can fully comprehend. 

May true American glory strengthen in vitali- 
ty, and enlarge in boundary, till its strength is 
worldlike, and its boundary earthlike. May its 
pillarian principles of just government, now bas- 
ed on a rocklike foundation, not be overthrown 
nor attempted to be overthrown, so long as the 
word America exists in any language. May the 
star that guided the immortal Columbus hither- 
ward to our shores never twinkle above her, 
nor its bright beams gild her broad surface, ex- 
cept in the glory of liberty, and in the liberty of 
peace. May the land which drew to its bor- 
ders and bosom the pilgrims of the sixteenth 
century, know no political or religious usurper, 
while Plymouth rock bounds the Atlantic, and 
the name Pilgrim fades not from human re- 
membrance. May the many myriads of the 
useful and the excellent men of all classes, 
who have fled to us, as from a tigers den, to es- 
cape the undue governmental restrictions of 
European lands, never, never have just cause 
to rent their garments in inglorious repentance, 
nor curse the sight of their adopted country. 
May the next three quarters of a century of the 
existence of the American orb, exhibit new 
phases of beauty and attractiveness to the 
world, surpassing all past experience or present 
expectation. May every advancing generation 
which shall yet inhabit American soil, and per- 
petuate and enjoy its existing principles of up- 
right government, have its soul lighted up, and 
its hands employed in works of gratitude to its 
predecessors. May every departing generation 
be able to congratulate itself on having at least 
preserved, if not promoted, the American repu- 
tation for honorable heroism and profound pa- 



- 



21 

triotism ; and likewise to carry with it, to its 
fathers in the uppermost skies, the welcome ti- 
dings that freedom still lives and nourishes in 
the country it left behind it. May her villages 
which are fast becoming towns, her towns 
which are rapidly growing to cities, and her 
chief cities which are each one by itself, biding 
hopefully yet to surpass in population, a Pekin 
and a Canton ; in enterprise and power, a Lon- 
don and a Paris ; in art, and intellectual and 
moral renown, an ancient Athens and Rome 
combined ; finally exceed in every commenda- 
ble respect, all the past achievments of men 
down to the discovery of the Western Conti- 
nents. May America go on from the acquiring 
of just possession to just possession, from pros- 
perity to prosperity, from high liberty to yet 
higher liberty, and from great renown to renown 
still greater, till the last breath of humanity 
shall have been drawn. May true American 
glory increase, while the Moon revolves around 
the Earth ; while the Earth revolves around the 
Sun, and while the Sun lights up the sphere as- 
signed to it by the hand of Divinity. 

Mr. Jefferson's deathplace and place of birth 
were both fitting spots for either or both of 
those events ; his youth, like Plato's, was pass- 
ed amid the charms of study and retirement ; 
his manhood, like Seneca's, was spent in con- 
ceiving, regulating and conducting State mea- 
sures ; his age, like his youth, found him again 
wrapt in virtuous reflection and penning down 
precepts for posterity ; his age also shows him 
engaged in founding an educational institution, 
such as gives a standing importance to free- 
men living under a free government ; the last 
day of his long and most useful life was on the 
Anniversary day when America was first pub- 



licly pronounced free ; his disinthralled spirit 
bade the doors of the sky to unfold themselves 
for its entrance, at a moment when the hallow- 
ed hosts thereof could look down and behold 
his freed country, flushed in its republican 
jubilee. 









IE N '10 



